"You cannot rehabilitate a person without rehabilitating their self-esteem, their perception of being a man or a woman," she says.
"You cannot ignore this part in our life. It's very important, powerful. It's the centre of our personality. And you cannot just talk about it. Sexuality is something dynamic, is something that has to be between us and other people."
Unfortunately, the prevailing sentiment is that you fix yourself in all other ways first, and then this aspect will automatically be ok.
I would disagree (EDIT: with the prevailing sentiment) but this is a minefield of a discussion.
I agree with the sentiment. While this aspect raises the self esteem it should not be used to fill other gaps of unaddressed problems or problems lurking underneath the surface. But if feeling unwanted is part of the problem, this may well help people get better. And it’s not only sexual but merely human connection that helps an unbalanced psych enormously.
> And it’s not only sexual but merely human connection that helps an unbalanced psych enormously.
Which is why if you read about what incels say, it seems they don't want to see escorts. Most of their problems seem to lie in feeling unwanted.
My guess is they are largely a byproduct of an atmoized individualistic society. They lack human connection, and see romantic connection as the ultimate one, reinforced by the fact that people tend to have fewer/no friends as they age.
Incels, I think, have a chip on their shoulders and negative attitudes. If they had better perspectives, I think they would enjoy life more and connect with others in healthier ways.
It is true though that social media, glowing screen distractions, and changing beliefs based on corporate manufactured/reinforced attitudes to leave insecurities and unfulfilled wants tend to put distance between people in the real world. The challenge is to make the extra effort to break through all that. I've found there are plenty of cool people who still socialize, and not just at an ephemeral, chit-chat level. It's just no one else wants to make the effort, aeveryone is waiting for Godot, and so nothing happens without initiative.
> I've found there are plenty of cool people who still socialize
Maybe it was just the circle I made, but people were exhausted from work and trying to survive. They barely managed time for self care.
Could be an American thing.
But I find it fascinating that everyone complains about loneliness and then when anyone makes an initiative to do something, people have a 100 excuses.
>> Most of their problems seem to lie in feeling unwanted.
And exactly because of that they are the least attractive to potential mates. And instead of facing that they attack idea in itself. Their problems are initially psych related and there should be a cure to them if enough attention was paid to them clinically. Their forums are not part of the solution, they are creating it. The terrible negative advice and toxic evolutionary dogma, the idea that they are excluded from the genetic pool by genetically superiors, ascribing them epithets and making it all a game in which they are the anti-protagonists themselves cannot lead to a healthy psyche but I haven't heard of any orchestrated effort to help them out, there are only secret agents monitoring for potential violence outbreaks in these communities. They are instead embittered, self hating and fueled with resentment daily on these forums by the self proclaimed leaders of thought in these forums. They feel like they are rejected from both women and men. They feel out of place from this world and the only solace they find on forums. These people need to be paid some attention to, to be taken out on trips, healthy communities to be made for them since they are not capable of creating themselves but this is a societal ill in many ways.
Another thought that people might dv without considering it from an intellectual perspective: Dispensing with incel negativity.. OTOH, let's consider attractive people who are accosted by people who just want to have sex with them without knowing them. That seems to feel similarly lonely, yes?
I mean, I'm no one special at all, but it feels weird in such examples as: you were chased around the playground by groups of the opposite gender before you understood, girls on the elementary school bus flashed you below their waists, much later a woman ditches her friend for you in the middle of the street, a woman wants you to get with her girlfriends, a woman pulls over and stops her car in the middle of traffic to make a proposal, or someone just comes right up to you and starts grinding on your leg after talking for 30 seconds. How can someone find intimacy if they're always anxious about not being appreciated as a person?
"You cannot rehabilitate a person without rehabilitating their self-esteem, their perception of being a man or a woman,"
Oddly enough, the 1st time I came across this idea was as a high school student in Marvel Comics' Secret Wars -- when X-Man Piotr Nikolayevich Rasputin/Colossus was healed. After his healer repaired the damage with her glowy magic hands, she proceeded to have a relationship with him. Meanwhile at least one onlooker concluded, that in her culture, this was all just a part of the healing process, and felt sorry for Piotr who had the wrong idea.
So after seeing like 10 bbc links on the front page today I feel entitled to a cookie banner rant.
WTF BBC!? You had a perfectly acceptable (by the already very low web standards) cookie page that simply informed and allowed an opt-in. Now I have to manually uncheck every single fucking tracking partner in a list of hundreds?
At face value, this seems like mere prostitution. However, when viewed through a medical lens, you’ll realize that sexual satisfaction is an essential human need that can have a profound impact on our general health and wellbeing.
A change in perspective and a little compassion makes a world of difference.
I get that you're just quiping but for anyone else that's curious, it's not as absurd as it sounds. There are a number of substantial differences.
Intent and purpose are huge parts of many laws. The money flows in very different directions. Both actors are being payed and contribute to producing a sincere commercial good. No one is paying to have sex at all.
There are enough laws around documentation and licencing that no one's out there running a brothel calling it a studio.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Prostitution is legal (or mostly legal) in many parts of the world. I would argue that most progressive leaning folks are in favour of a legal framework for sex workers. Sex work is work, whether it comes with a fancy word like "sex surrogate therapist" or a derogatory one like "hooker". The issue is controversial in many places, to some extent because of real issues of abuse/trafficking, but more so because of moralizing.
I would argue that all sex workers deserve respect, in front of judges or on HN, regardless of whether it's prostitution or surrogation.
Affordable -access- to healthcare should be a human right. No given doctor has to treat you (though there are a list of reasons a doctor can't refuse treatment), same as with every other profession. But inability to pay should not prevent you from seeking and finding treatment, and being treated should not mean bankruptcy.
>But inability to pay should not preclude you from seeking treatment.
That's the sticky bit if you think about it. Not all, but many women and men get into sex work due to lack of other options, with all that in context it would seem that there is a suggestion that you have a human right to sleep with disadvantaged women or men at government expense. If no disadvantaged people exist then I presume it would be the governments role to create them. This quickly descends into madness.
How disadvantaged are we talking about? Making ends meet, or being well off?
Because I got into software engineering because it was the best paying option available to me that fit into my morals and ethics. I'd imagine that's also what got people into being doctors, social workers, etc. I'm not sure how sex work in this case is different. In fact, from the article, it sounds like it requires training; even if the government provided that to anyone, how is that different from any other governmental work program? How is it different from joining the armed forces? How would both be different if we also addressed poverty via a UBI or similar?
You're looking at sex work as it is now, a socially unacceptable option open to nearly everyone as a last resort. This categorically changes it to be a form of social work; I don't think the same stigmas and contexts apply.
If someone isn't forced into a job and they make the choice to do so, telling them they don't have the right to make that choice is arrogant and moralizing BS. MYOB.
>telling them they don't have the right to make that choice is arrogant and moralizing BS
I never did this and was quite clear that some choose this willingly vs making the choice due to drug addiction or some other tragic reason. However, taking advantage of another persons drug addiction and getting them to sleep with you in exchange for more money to buy the drug is the same thing as taking advantage of someone's down syndrome in exchange for money to buy candy. It simply isn't something that someone who isn't a predator does.
Incidentally, I was refused treatment by a doctor for a no exam required condition because of their magical religious beliefs discriminating against gender.
This lays bare a fundamental issue with positive rights in general: having the right _to_ something boils down to having the right to force someone else to provide it for you. Compared to, for instance, the right to be safe from harm. Negative rights are easy to pin down, whereas positive rights, regardless of whether or not we should provide healthcare for everyone etc., are not a very solid concept and mean different things to everyone.
Doesn't the Declaration of Independence call out that governments are instituted to -secure- rights; specifically, 'the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? That sounds like a positive right to me, one very specifically saying governments are charged with upholding. And healthcare certainly seems like it falls under 'life', if not all three.
I find this attempt to distinguish between positive and negative rights unhelpful semantic rhetoric. Every positive right can be rephrased into a negative right, and vice versa. The first amendment's "Congress shall make no law..." equates to "You have the right to (speak, gather, etc) free from governmental censorship".
"The right to be safe from harm" itself sounds like a positive right; certainly, without enforcement to ensure it, such a statement is a lie and the right de facto does not exist.
I think the important distinction is that negative rights are defaults. You are already not being harmed unless someone harms you. Whether law enforcement exists or not, you can say someone harming you is violating your rights. With the right to healthcare, were all pre-modern humans constantly walking around having their rights violated?
Healthcare requires a whole setup, so additionally it's hard to talk about what you even have the right to, concretely. I agree it's a semantic distinction, but I think it is helpful, because it separates rights in to the kinds that are fundamentally attached to human beings and the kinds that are basically strong preferences for the existence of different institutions.
Why can you say that someone harming you is violating your rights? That presumes there is some objective truth determining what rights you have. Even if you believe in God or a creator or similar, that everyone has certain inalienable rights granted by that God/creator, there is quite a bit of difference over what those rights are, or how they're to be carried out, and -certainly- claims of "my rights!" don't seem to invoke that God/creator to do anything for you.
Governments upholding 'rights', then, only makes sense to talk about from a social contract perspective; what do we, as a society, decide people have a right to. We can decide people have a right to freedom from harm, or we can abridge that right (as we do when punishing someone). We can decide kids have a right to education, a right to clean drinking water, etc, or not.
"Healthcare is a right" is, obviously, not a statement of fact (it currently is not), but a statement of what should be, an implicit belief of what society should adhere to. It's no more and no less accurate to say it's a right than to say "a right to liberty" is a right; it's up to society to adopt any such claim and adhere to it.
And that distinction is true whether it's a positive or negative right, and a completely different discussion.
>>Why can you say that someone harming you is violating your rights? That presumes there is some objective truth determining what rights you have.
Your claims are self-refuting. You don't need to believe in speech or a right to it in order to speak. You have to right to free speech because because you are able to speak without the interference or involvement of others. This is an objective right because it is predicated on objective concretes (i.e. the ability to communicate). If there are no objective rights then there is no such thing as a harm or benefit. Only an empty act devoid of all meaning on it's own.
>>Even if you believe in God or a creator or similar, that everyone has certain inalienable rights granted by that God/creator, there is quite a bit of difference over what those rights are, or how they're to be carried out, and -certainly- claims of "my rights!" don't seem to invoke that God/creator to do anything for you.Governments upholding 'rights', then, only makes sense to talk about from a social contract perspective; what do we, as a society, decide people have a right to. We can decide people have a right to freedom from harm, or we can abridge that right (as we do when punishing someone). We can decide kids have a right to education, a right to clean drinking water, etc, or not.
A "social contract" is only as good as the awareness/belief of its existence. In your world of social contracts, rights are determined by mystical belief, mass delusion, or the will of the mob. Not objective circumstances. Social contracts as such are neither provable nor enforceable. They are elements of a civil religion or a civil superstition.
>>"Healthcare is a right" is, obviously, not a statement of fact (it currently is not), but a statement of what should be, an implicit belief of what society should adhere to. It's no more and no less accurate to say it's a right than to say "a right to liberty" is a right; it's up to society to adopt any such claim and adhere to it.
And that distinction is true whether it's a positive or negative right, and a completely different discussion.
Society can't adopt a negative right because a negative right can't be enforced. It can only be observed, enumerated, and built upon. A right to liberty is a right because (I know I'm repeating myself) the existence of said right is predicated on your concretes of being able to live freely in the first place. And doing so without the interference or intervention of others.
Prostitution has always fulfilled basic human needs. Banning it has never been about helping people, always about dominating them and thereby increasing the power of the church or state. The fact that these bans remain in place in our "enlightened" modern societies is shameful.
Unregulated prostitution always turns into a safe haven for violent and coercive human trafficking. And we don't know what kind of regulation would effectively prevent this, but what examples exist of legalized prostitution at the medium-to-large scale are far from encouraging. Banning prostitution outright might not be the best possible policy, but it's far from the worst.
This article is literally the "government-mandated gf" incel meme, except it's real.
I don't know how to define prostitution. Is any form of exchanging sex for money ("sex work") prostitution? Like acting in porn, escorting, sex therapy, sugar daddying, etc.. Or is prostitution simply the lowest rung on the sex work ladder, defined by things like the speed of the transaction, the quality of clients and providers, the cost, and the environments where the transaction occurs?
In the US, somehow introducing a camera between consenting adults exchanging money is legal, while without a camera it is not.
There's nothing wrong with the oldest profession except the prudish puritanicals who throw pimping, "exploitation," and human trafficking FUD, moral judgments, slut-shaming, and sex-negativity onto independent sex workers and consenting adults. They need to stay out of other peoples' business.
As my ex would say: "If everyone had more sex, the world would be a happier place." I think this starts with stripping away shame, judgements, and disgruntlement.
As my ex would say: "If everyone had more sex, the world would be a happier place." I think this starts with stripping away shame, judgements, and disgruntlement.
Re: disgruntlement -- I think sex surrogates would very quickly solve the "incel problem."
In BBC's Sherlock, there's this idea that Sherlock is a "sociopath on the side of the angels." He could be a villain, but he has found a way to channel his natural talents and tendencies for good. I think there are certain people who have this talent/tendency to strongly influence the lives of an entire harem of sexual partners. I think this is largely seen as strongly negative by much of culture and society because there's no positive outlet for people who have such talents and tendencies. Also, the kind of power such therapists would wield needs a good education and various checks and balances, much as doctors and other kinds of therapists do.
Lots of people who could have been a naturally talented doctor in the 21st century were probably burned at the stake in centuries past. I think this is one kind of therapy which falls into a similar pattern. The world just wasn't ready for it before.
I guess you would know her intent better, but in this particular regard, I am making a literal recommendation to go "Brave New World." I won't vouch for any of the other concepts from the book.
Let's be honest: there is prostitution in every country. The people getting this therapy aren't going for prostitution. They could get that elsewhere easier.
Soldiers make up just a few percent of her total clients, why are they the focus of the headline and the article? It's like they're trying to use "support the troops" to preemptively stop any criticism or distract from the complete lack of data backed benefits the treatment has been shown to provide.
interesting angle, obvious in hindsight. i wonder if a medicinal approach to sex can help relax the US's puritanical views, similar to marijuana, and help open the doorway to recreational use.
this feels very dangerous though. people are fundamentally animals and sex is tightly interwoven with evolutionary biology in a way that drugs are not. decoupling sex from social interaction may be axiomatically wrong in the same way that removing rewards for performance is axiomatically wrong - people are just wired that way. no one wants to be CEO of an international company and get paid the same amount as an 18 year old data entry assistant. i think there is a similar pressure regarding mate selection and sex that exists regardless of culture.
I do not find that self evident, our society does not resemble a meritocracy.
But lets accept the premice - what plausible way is there for this "very dangerous' to manifest? We've had arranged marriages too, do they cause disaster?
Banning sex work, abortion, alcohol/substances, books, free speech, and LGBT+ are just ways for the moralizers to control others with their Gilead, totalitarian aspirations.
The sentiment around sex work is so fascinating. What difference does it honestly make if you're having sex because you're attractive or because you paid? Either way both people are incentivized and have consented.
If prostitution were legal and accepted in the USA, I'd bet it would shoot up to #1 of all the "vices" (e.g. gambling, smoking, drinking) within a year.
Part of the picture is not only the sexual contact but other psychologic innerworkings. The longing to feel wanted/desired is a big part of it and paid intercourse cannot offer that.
The sad thing about this type of article is that we have a perfectly legitimate case for people whose work happens to involve sex - in a fully responsible and measured way - and it becomes as a hook to make a shallow "all sex work should be normalized".
> What difference does it honestly make?
Is that a cheap rhetorical question or do you don't see the moral issues of legalized prostitution?
Just to start with the basics: how "incentivized" is someone who grew up with poverty and/or abuse and started prostituting themselves? How can we prevent young vulnerable girls getting lured into it? What is a woman that entered into the oldest profession to do after she reached an age where she is no longer attractive and can not compete with the hordes of young girls who see it as a way to make a lot of money for little "work"?
Let's think a bit further: how about the health and their own relationship with sex for a woman that turned to prostitution? Don't you think that dealing with all sorts of Johns (who are likely to have their own issues when relating to sex) leads into prostitutes having their own sex issues?
"Well, porn has faced the same challenges, got regulated and now it's a huge industry", you might say. Yes, it's true. The questions are then: do you really want to turn everything into an "industry"? Are we better of as a society after that porn became something to be mass-produced and mass-consumed? For every Mia Khalifa that managed to turn her life around, how many other women got ground up by a life-changing decision they would make when so young? Do we want to have even more of the political-bureaucratic machine responsible in telling us what is acceptable and what is not?
> If prostitution were legal and accepted in the USA
Plenty of countries where it is legal and it still doesn't hold a candle to drinking or smoking.
The logic you use about prostitution can be used for anything that harms someone. So I'm not really sure what your point is. Should we ban all things that harm people? Mining, construction, gambling, drinking, tobacco, etc. etc. etc.
> Do we want to have even more of the political-bureaucratic machine responsible in telling us what is acceptable and what is not?
My objection is to this equivalence between sex and sex work and the dismissal of any moral values related to it.
> What's your answer to this?
The liberal in me will say "Decriminalization and harm-reduction", the conservative in me will add "as long as you always focus on reducing the activity and always look at these as problems that society should treat as something to eradicate (even if impossible)".
Legalization and this mentality of "people do it anyway, so let's just regulate it" only leads to a false feeling that the problem is not existent anymore, does not make the lives of those affected by the broken system any better, makes us complacent and leads to an even worse situation than the one we started with.
For me, I am looking forward to advances in robotics and AI over the coming decades to help meet needs like this.
Because, although there are certainly some women (and men) who seem to adjust to this type of work, and certainly the brutal economic realities make it problematic to deny the option of sex work.. my impression is that it is usually damaging socially and psychologically to those in the field. So I view the prevalence of prostitution largely as a symptom of economic deficiency.
I'm not saying that this particular effort isn't nobel in a way or that this work should be illegal. But I don't think it's a black and white issue the way some people seem to think. It's not just a matter of glorious freedom versus religious prudishness or something like that.
Soldiers need not just sex but true intimacy. It's really questionable whether that can truly be provided on a for-hire basis. And also hard to believe that constantly simulating intimacy with different men does not take a toll on a person's psyche.
You can't force intimacy, but you can foster it by facilitating dating opportunities. I guess there could be subsidized RGFE sexual-emotional prostitution where someone visits and acts as therapist, companion, and such.
I wouldn't judge, moralize, or worry about what consenting adults choose to do. These sort of Big Mother vague concerns are often the slippery-slopes used to rationalize telling people what they can and can't do.
That's a sweeping, negative generalization and suggests women don't have a choice. There are millionaire prostitutes who are entrepreneurs. Some do it to pay for college and other expenses when service worker jobs pay nothing. Looking down on sex workers from a view of pity and paternalism is a problem.
I went into this thinking sex surrogates were fine. I came out less convinced somehow.
* It's weird that some people aren't comfortable talking to doctors and therapists but are ok with sex surrogates
* It's much weirder to me that a couple would rather do this than just try to learn things together
* Some of this seemed to be about occupational therapy and learning how to live your life again. But it seems like most of these surrogates aren't trained in any way. They're just willing to have sex with people. And some of them have no hope of being independently capable, like the guy who was totally paralyzed.
My bullshit detector says that even if everyone in this article is being entirely honest, there's going to be a lot of this that is just normal prostitution with people who aren't viewing themselves as a charitable tour guide of sexual confidence but are instead willing to fuck for cash.
I'd say portraying people as doing work for virtuous reasons when in fact its because they need cash has tended to result in abuse, be that prostitutes, or soldiers or whatever.
I don't see the problem. The Netherlands subsidizes sex for disabled people. Making a basic human need into some sort of taboo fetish as too many countries do goes against human nature. The French and Japanese I think have it about right.
> The French and Japanese I think have it about right.
What?? Prostitution is legal in France BUT proxenetism is not, and buying sex isn’t either, making it very hard for sex workers to work under a roof and advertise their services. It exactly creates the conditions (trafficking) that the laws are supposed to fight.
In Japan prostitution is nominally forbidden and actually tolerated, and other sexual services are available as well, which is indeed a good solution.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 155 ms ] thread"You cannot ignore this part in our life. It's very important, powerful. It's the centre of our personality. And you cannot just talk about it. Sexuality is something dynamic, is something that has to be between us and other people."
Unfortunately, the prevailing sentiment is that you fix yourself in all other ways first, and then this aspect will automatically be ok.
I would disagree (EDIT: with the prevailing sentiment) but this is a minefield of a discussion.
Which is why if you read about what incels say, it seems they don't want to see escorts. Most of their problems seem to lie in feeling unwanted.
My guess is they are largely a byproduct of an atmoized individualistic society. They lack human connection, and see romantic connection as the ultimate one, reinforced by the fact that people tend to have fewer/no friends as they age.
It is true though that social media, glowing screen distractions, and changing beliefs based on corporate manufactured/reinforced attitudes to leave insecurities and unfulfilled wants tend to put distance between people in the real world. The challenge is to make the extra effort to break through all that. I've found there are plenty of cool people who still socialize, and not just at an ephemeral, chit-chat level. It's just no one else wants to make the effort, aeveryone is waiting for Godot, and so nothing happens without initiative.
Maybe it was just the circle I made, but people were exhausted from work and trying to survive. They barely managed time for self care.
Could be an American thing.
But I find it fascinating that everyone complains about loneliness and then when anyone makes an initiative to do something, people have a 100 excuses.
And exactly because of that they are the least attractive to potential mates. And instead of facing that they attack idea in itself. Their problems are initially psych related and there should be a cure to them if enough attention was paid to them clinically. Their forums are not part of the solution, they are creating it. The terrible negative advice and toxic evolutionary dogma, the idea that they are excluded from the genetic pool by genetically superiors, ascribing them epithets and making it all a game in which they are the anti-protagonists themselves cannot lead to a healthy psyche but I haven't heard of any orchestrated effort to help them out, there are only secret agents monitoring for potential violence outbreaks in these communities. They are instead embittered, self hating and fueled with resentment daily on these forums by the self proclaimed leaders of thought in these forums. They feel like they are rejected from both women and men. They feel out of place from this world and the only solace they find on forums. These people need to be paid some attention to, to be taken out on trips, healthy communities to be made for them since they are not capable of creating themselves but this is a societal ill in many ways.
It doesn't help that mental health help is seen as 'weak' and 'for wusses' and that they just need to man up.
I mean, I'm no one special at all, but it feels weird in such examples as: you were chased around the playground by groups of the opposite gender before you understood, girls on the elementary school bus flashed you below their waists, much later a woman ditches her friend for you in the middle of the street, a woman wants you to get with her girlfriends, a woman pulls over and stops her car in the middle of traffic to make a proposal, or someone just comes right up to you and starts grinding on your leg after talking for 30 seconds. How can someone find intimacy if they're always anxious about not being appreciated as a person?
It's just not a good look (pun unintended) for a someone born attractive to complain about their hard life.
"X but Y." X is always BS.
Oddly enough, the 1st time I came across this idea was as a high school student in Marvel Comics' Secret Wars -- when X-Man Piotr Nikolayevich Rasputin/Colossus was healed. After his healer repaired the damage with her glowy magic hands, she proceeded to have a relationship with him. Meanwhile at least one onlooker concluded, that in her culture, this was all just a part of the healing process, and felt sorry for Piotr who had the wrong idea.
WTF BBC!? You had a perfectly acceptable (by the already very low web standards) cookie page that simply informed and allowed an opt-in. Now I have to manually uncheck every single fucking tracking partner in a list of hundreds?
Have fun without me from here on out. *ragequit*
A change in perspective and a little compassion makes a world of difference.
Other places have hour long marriages to get around the problem.
Intent and purpose are huge parts of many laws. The money flows in very different directions. Both actors are being payed and contribute to producing a sincere commercial good. No one is paying to have sex at all.
There are enough laws around documentation and licencing that no one's out there running a brothel calling it a studio.
I would argue that all sex workers deserve respect, in front of judges or on HN, regardless of whether it's prostitution or surrogation.
Reality is more nuanced.
Under regulation, drugs and prostitution are not intrinsically bad things.
Drugs are cool, but easily addictive / bad in excess.
I don't see how sex is bad in any amount unless it interferes with daily life or health.
That, and you don't have to take them to dinner and there's no financial transaction involved.
That's the sticky bit if you think about it. Not all, but many women and men get into sex work due to lack of other options, with all that in context it would seem that there is a suggestion that you have a human right to sleep with disadvantaged women or men at government expense. If no disadvantaged people exist then I presume it would be the governments role to create them. This quickly descends into madness.
Because I got into software engineering because it was the best paying option available to me that fit into my morals and ethics. I'd imagine that's also what got people into being doctors, social workers, etc. I'm not sure how sex work in this case is different. In fact, from the article, it sounds like it requires training; even if the government provided that to anyone, how is that different from any other governmental work program? How is it different from joining the armed forces? How would both be different if we also addressed poverty via a UBI or similar?
You're looking at sex work as it is now, a socially unacceptable option open to nearly everyone as a last resort. This categorically changes it to be a form of social work; I don't think the same stigmas and contexts apply.
I never did this and was quite clear that some choose this willingly vs making the choice due to drug addiction or some other tragic reason. However, taking advantage of another persons drug addiction and getting them to sleep with you in exchange for more money to buy the drug is the same thing as taking advantage of someone's down syndrome in exchange for money to buy candy. It simply isn't something that someone who isn't a predator does.
I find this attempt to distinguish between positive and negative rights unhelpful semantic rhetoric. Every positive right can be rephrased into a negative right, and vice versa. The first amendment's "Congress shall make no law..." equates to "You have the right to (speak, gather, etc) free from governmental censorship".
"The right to be safe from harm" itself sounds like a positive right; certainly, without enforcement to ensure it, such a statement is a lie and the right de facto does not exist.
Healthcare requires a whole setup, so additionally it's hard to talk about what you even have the right to, concretely. I agree it's a semantic distinction, but I think it is helpful, because it separates rights in to the kinds that are fundamentally attached to human beings and the kinds that are basically strong preferences for the existence of different institutions.
Governments upholding 'rights', then, only makes sense to talk about from a social contract perspective; what do we, as a society, decide people have a right to. We can decide people have a right to freedom from harm, or we can abridge that right (as we do when punishing someone). We can decide kids have a right to education, a right to clean drinking water, etc, or not.
"Healthcare is a right" is, obviously, not a statement of fact (it currently is not), but a statement of what should be, an implicit belief of what society should adhere to. It's no more and no less accurate to say it's a right than to say "a right to liberty" is a right; it's up to society to adopt any such claim and adhere to it.
And that distinction is true whether it's a positive or negative right, and a completely different discussion.
Your claims are self-refuting. You don't need to believe in speech or a right to it in order to speak. You have to right to free speech because because you are able to speak without the interference or involvement of others. This is an objective right because it is predicated on objective concretes (i.e. the ability to communicate). If there are no objective rights then there is no such thing as a harm or benefit. Only an empty act devoid of all meaning on it's own.
>>Even if you believe in God or a creator or similar, that everyone has certain inalienable rights granted by that God/creator, there is quite a bit of difference over what those rights are, or how they're to be carried out, and -certainly- claims of "my rights!" don't seem to invoke that God/creator to do anything for you.Governments upholding 'rights', then, only makes sense to talk about from a social contract perspective; what do we, as a society, decide people have a right to. We can decide people have a right to freedom from harm, or we can abridge that right (as we do when punishing someone). We can decide kids have a right to education, a right to clean drinking water, etc, or not.
A "social contract" is only as good as the awareness/belief of its existence. In your world of social contracts, rights are determined by mystical belief, mass delusion, or the will of the mob. Not objective circumstances. Social contracts as such are neither provable nor enforceable. They are elements of a civil religion or a civil superstition.
>>"Healthcare is a right" is, obviously, not a statement of fact (it currently is not), but a statement of what should be, an implicit belief of what society should adhere to. It's no more and no less accurate to say it's a right than to say "a right to liberty" is a right; it's up to society to adopt any such claim and adhere to it. And that distinction is true whether it's a positive or negative right, and a completely different discussion.
Society can't adopt a negative right because a negative right can't be enforced. It can only be observed, enumerated, and built upon. A right to liberty is a right because (I know I'm repeating myself) the existence of said right is predicated on your concretes of being able to live freely in the first place. And doing so without the interference or intervention of others.
Today some/many consider it immoral to walk around with face uncovered. Imagine hundreds to thousands of years ago when soap was a novel concept.
Social distancing and strict rules were about as much as a society could do.
Definitely some mixing of religion and sanitary practices.
Prohibition never works and always creates more problems that it erroneously attempts to in "solving" moral panics getting in other people's business.
I don't know how to define prostitution. Is any form of exchanging sex for money ("sex work") prostitution? Like acting in porn, escorting, sex therapy, sugar daddying, etc.. Or is prostitution simply the lowest rung on the sex work ladder, defined by things like the speed of the transaction, the quality of clients and providers, the cost, and the environments where the transaction occurs?
There's nothing wrong with the oldest profession except the prudish puritanicals who throw pimping, "exploitation," and human trafficking FUD, moral judgments, slut-shaming, and sex-negativity onto independent sex workers and consenting adults. They need to stay out of other peoples' business.
As my ex would say: "If everyone had more sex, the world would be a happier place." I think this starts with stripping away shame, judgements, and disgruntlement.
Re: disgruntlement -- I think sex surrogates would very quickly solve the "incel problem."
In BBC's Sherlock, there's this idea that Sherlock is a "sociopath on the side of the angels." He could be a villain, but he has found a way to channel his natural talents and tendencies for good. I think there are certain people who have this talent/tendency to strongly influence the lives of an entire harem of sexual partners. I think this is largely seen as strongly negative by much of culture and society because there's no positive outlet for people who have such talents and tendencies. Also, the kind of power such therapists would wield needs a good education and various checks and balances, much as doctors and other kinds of therapists do.
Lots of people who could have been a naturally talented doctor in the 21st century were probably burned at the stake in centuries past. I think this is one kind of therapy which falls into a similar pattern. The world just wasn't ready for it before.
Her comment was euphemistic hyperbole, not a literal recommendation to go Brave New World.
ATX = Austin?
this feels very dangerous though. people are fundamentally animals and sex is tightly interwoven with evolutionary biology in a way that drugs are not. decoupling sex from social interaction may be axiomatically wrong in the same way that removing rewards for performance is axiomatically wrong - people are just wired that way. no one wants to be CEO of an international company and get paid the same amount as an 18 year old data entry assistant. i think there is a similar pressure regarding mate selection and sex that exists regardless of culture.
I do not find that self evident, our society does not resemble a meritocracy.
But lets accept the premice - what plausible way is there for this "very dangerous' to manifest? We've had arranged marriages too, do they cause disaster?
Our society is about as competent at dealing with this hush-hush topic as medieval peasants were with hygiene
If prostitution were legal and accepted in the USA, I'd bet it would shoot up to #1 of all the "vices" (e.g. gambling, smoking, drinking) within a year.
> What difference does it honestly make?
Is that a cheap rhetorical question or do you don't see the moral issues of legalized prostitution?
Just to start with the basics: how "incentivized" is someone who grew up with poverty and/or abuse and started prostituting themselves? How can we prevent young vulnerable girls getting lured into it? What is a woman that entered into the oldest profession to do after she reached an age where she is no longer attractive and can not compete with the hordes of young girls who see it as a way to make a lot of money for little "work"?
Let's think a bit further: how about the health and their own relationship with sex for a woman that turned to prostitution? Don't you think that dealing with all sorts of Johns (who are likely to have their own issues when relating to sex) leads into prostitutes having their own sex issues?
"Well, porn has faced the same challenges, got regulated and now it's a huge industry", you might say. Yes, it's true. The questions are then: do you really want to turn everything into an "industry"? Are we better of as a society after that porn became something to be mass-produced and mass-consumed? For every Mia Khalifa that managed to turn her life around, how many other women got ground up by a life-changing decision they would make when so young? Do we want to have even more of the political-bureaucratic machine responsible in telling us what is acceptable and what is not?
> If prostitution were legal and accepted in the USA
Plenty of countries where it is legal and it still doesn't hold a candle to drinking or smoking.
> Do we want to have even more of the political-bureaucratic machine responsible in telling us what is acceptable and what is not?
What's your answer to this?
Who said anything about "banning"?
My objection is to this equivalence between sex and sex work and the dismissal of any moral values related to it.
> What's your answer to this?
The liberal in me will say "Decriminalization and harm-reduction", the conservative in me will add "as long as you always focus on reducing the activity and always look at these as problems that society should treat as something to eradicate (even if impossible)".
Legalization and this mentality of "people do it anyway, so let's just regulate it" only leads to a false feeling that the problem is not existent anymore, does not make the lives of those affected by the broken system any better, makes us complacent and leads to an even worse situation than the one we started with.
I think the moralizers just need to MYOB and government regulate each vice sensibly. It is the least harm and most pragmatic approach.
Edit: at least they're dead comments I guess.
Because, although there are certainly some women (and men) who seem to adjust to this type of work, and certainly the brutal economic realities make it problematic to deny the option of sex work.. my impression is that it is usually damaging socially and psychologically to those in the field. So I view the prevalence of prostitution largely as a symptom of economic deficiency.
I'm not saying that this particular effort isn't nobel in a way or that this work should be illegal. But I don't think it's a black and white issue the way some people seem to think. It's not just a matter of glorious freedom versus religious prudishness or something like that.
Soldiers need not just sex but true intimacy. It's really questionable whether that can truly be provided on a for-hire basis. And also hard to believe that constantly simulating intimacy with different men does not take a toll on a person's psyche.
I wouldn't judge, moralize, or worry about what consenting adults choose to do. These sort of Big Mother vague concerns are often the slippery-slopes used to rationalize telling people what they can and can't do.
But yes in fact we should worry when prostitution increases because it correlates with destitution and desperation.
* It's weird that some people aren't comfortable talking to doctors and therapists but are ok with sex surrogates
* It's much weirder to me that a couple would rather do this than just try to learn things together
* Some of this seemed to be about occupational therapy and learning how to live your life again. But it seems like most of these surrogates aren't trained in any way. They're just willing to have sex with people. And some of them have no hope of being independently capable, like the guy who was totally paralyzed.
My bullshit detector says that even if everyone in this article is being entirely honest, there's going to be a lot of this that is just normal prostitution with people who aren't viewing themselves as a charitable tour guide of sexual confidence but are instead willing to fuck for cash.
And what is the problem with that?
Sex is not charity, there is always something in return, why not cash?
What?? Prostitution is legal in France BUT proxenetism is not, and buying sex isn’t either, making it very hard for sex workers to work under a roof and advertise their services. It exactly creates the conditions (trafficking) that the laws are supposed to fight.
In Japan prostitution is nominally forbidden and actually tolerated, and other sexual services are available as well, which is indeed a good solution.